The densely-printed 162-page document was filed with the US Bankruptcy Court in New York on Wednesday. The list was broken into categories including customers, vendors, employees, brokers/dealers and other parties. No corresponding amounts of money invested are included with the customer names; in fact, there is a chance that some of these people are not victims but merely contacted the trustee seeking more information. For instance, one of Madoff's attorney's--Ira Lee Sorkin--is listed on it. Presumably he could not represent Madoff with such a conflict of interest, if this is the same Sorkin.

With those caveats in mind, the media and anyone with even a passing interest in Madoff--who has been accused of bilking investors of $50 billion in an elaborate Ponzi scheme--has been scanning the publicly-available pages.

For instance, Larry Silverstein, the World Trade Center developer, is on it. Silverstein, if he was victimized by Madoff, is hardly the only representative from the commercial real estate community in these straits. Over the past two months, either through news reports, court filings, or people's own admission, it has become clear that several New York City--and to a lesser extent, Washington, DC--developers, brokers and real estate attorneys were caught up with Madoff.

These include:

The Wilpons and Rechlers families;
Brokers at Newmark Knight Frank and CB Richard Ellis--including Stephen Siegel, chairman of worldwide operations there, according to an article in the New York Times, last year;
New Jersey developer Fred Daibes was also reported to have lost a significant amount of money;
Mort Zuckerman, the chief executive of Boston Properties;
Fred Wilpon, who owns the Mets and is head of Sterling Equities, have also been said to have invested with Madoff;
Steven Simkin, a partner at the New York law firm of Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison and chairman of the firm's real estate department, is among the victims--a fact that came out in divorce proceedings, according to theNew York Post;
A number of limited real estate partnerships in DC are also among the supposed victims.

Chances are, however, these are the "real" Larry King, Koufax et al. Madoff was known to have focused on the very well-heeled and famous. Indeed, he reportedly turned down one potential investor because he would not pony up a $20 million minimum.

As this list is more closely examined it will become clearer what the impact will be on the commercial real estate space. Many of the developers who invested with Madoff have been reported to have pledged securities held by him for development projects. Once banks connect the dots back to their own balance sheets, lending and credit is bound to become even tighter than it already is.

The complete client list of Madoff is provided here by the Wall Street Journal.

GlobeSt.com will update this story as more information becomes available.

Instant Insights /

Madoff List Illustrates Impact on CRE

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